Chocolate Chip Cookies

A chocolate chip cookie is a drop cookie that originated in the United States and features chocolate chips as its distinguishing ingredient. The traditional recipe combines a dough composed of butter and both brown and white sugar with semi-sweet chocolate chips. Variations include recipes with other types of chocolate or additional ingredients, such as nuts or oatmeal.

It is agreed that the chocolate chip cookie was accidentally developed by Ruth Wakefield in 1934. She owned the Toll House Inn, in Whitman, Massachusetts, a very popular restaurant in the 1930s. The restaurant’s popularity was not just due to its home-cooked style meals; her policy was to give diners a whole extra helping of their entrées to take home with them and a serving of her homemade cookies for dessert. Her cookbook, Toll House Tried and True Recipes, was published in 1936 by M. Barrows & Company, New York, and included the recipe “Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookie”, for what have since been widely called Toll House cookies.